


The Greatest Love Story Ever Told

by justbygrace



Category: Supernatural
Genre: A look back on life, Canon Divergent, Canon Future, Character Death because of nature of story, I swear, It's mostly happy, M/M, POV of Original Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-17 12:48:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/867720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justbygrace/pseuds/justbygrace





	The Greatest Love Story Ever Told

So you want to know what true love is? I can tell you a story about the most beautiful love story I have ever or will ever see. And I had the privilege of witnessing it first hand. It is not the story of my husband and I, though we love each other deeply. Nor is it the story of my parents though their relationship is rock solid. No, the story I want to share with you is the love between my uncle and his husband.

You couldn't be in the same room with them before you knew about their profound bond. It was in the secret smiles, their just-a-little-too-close proximity, and the little touches they frequently shared. When people talk about couples who orbit around one another, they are the couple that comes to mind. Looking back I can barely recall any times when I knew that they were angry, or even frustrated, with one another. I asked Uncle Dean about this once. He leaned down and said, "Honey, when you've been through the things that I've been through with your uncle, every day stuff just don't make you angry anymore." It was several years before I knew what he was referring to.

When I was young I would dreamily announce that they had a match made in heaven, or by Disney, I wasn't picky.  
My father would sigh dramatically, "More like made in hell."  
And every time my Uncle Cas would just smile across the room at Uncle Dean and say, "Determined by heaven, created in hell, tested in Purgatory, and validated on earth."

It was years before I knew their whole story. My father had determined to not raise my sister and I the same way he had been, though I had no real understanding what "way" that was, just his rantings whenever certain topics came up. My cousins had no such qualms, but even Hope and James didn't know the whole thing. They knew that one or the other of their fathers would occasionally leave their day job and go on a hunting trip. They were aware of enough whispers to gather the neighborhood kids around at sleep-overs and go for a dramatic retelling, but it was more of a campfire ghost story than anything that really happened. 

However, when I was about 13, Uncle Dean and Uncle Cas, together with my parents, sat down with their children and my sister and I and told us about the Winchester family business. They told us about deals and ghosts and legacies. Of angels and demons. Of choices and the consequences of those choices. They talked about people who were long gone and our names suddenly made a lot more sense. That day I learned that my father and my uncles were heroes. I also learned why we had sigils and symbols carved into our house.

I was very jealous when Hope and James got to start going along on hunts. I begged and pleaded, but my father was firm in his denial and I would pout in my room until they returned to tell me all the details. Granted even they didn't get to go along very often, but it felt very unfair to me.

We lived around the corner from them and I spent a lot of my angsty teenage years over at their house, ranting to Uncle Dean as he fixed his "baby" or to Uncle Cas as he fixed dinner; he was a fabulous cook. Uncle Cas was a wonderful listener, but if I got too emotional with Uncle Dean he would firmly tell me 'no chick flick moments and could I please pass him the wrench'. There was only one exception to that rule and I will never forget it.

It was the fall I was 14 and my sister was 16. She had recently come out as a lesbian and was having a particularly hard time at school with some upper classmen who were determined to make her life miserable. She came in from school one day in tears and was refusing to speak to anyone. When I saw Uncle Dean follow her to the backyard, I tagged along at a safe distance, curious what he could do with my sobbing sister. She was huddled under the trampoline when I got there and he was crouched next to her. They sat there together for a moment before he spoke.

"Jody Winchester, you listen to me cause I'm only saying this once. Don't you ever listen to anyone who tells you who you can or can't love. Ain't no one's got that right. You can love anyone or anything and that's okay. You hear me? Love ain't something you can control and it's certainly not something to be ashamed of. The only thing anyone should be ashamed of is hate. Love is the most amazing thing in the world and it can save your life, if you'll let it. It's the hardest thing you'll ever do, loving someone, but it is worth it. So hold up your head and tell everyone who tries to tell you not to love to fuck off. Got it?"

It was the longest speech I'd ever heard him make and when I turned around I saw Uncle Cas standing there with a look of love that rivaled anything I'd ever seen come out of Hollywood.

It took me years before I realized that every love story doesn't have to start with one party gripping the other and pulling them out of perdition.

When Uncle Dean was in his mid-60s he started to become more forgetful. At first everyone chalked it up to his advancing age, but it gradually grew worse and worse. When he was finally convinced to go to a doctor, we discovered it was oncoming Alzheimer's. Uncle Cas was able to care for them both for awhile, but when Uncle Dean dug up the long-dead family dog and burned its bones, the family decided it was time for an intervention and found a place for them at an assisted living facility. 

The home wanted to put them in different rooms and Uncle Dean nearly took out three nurses and a doctor. My father was able to help the administration quickly see the benefits of putting them in the same living area.

He had good days and bad days, sometimes calling us by the names of those long gone, but he was very lucid the day that Hope placed his first great-granddaughter in his arms.

When I would visit them in the home, the nurses would gather round to tell me stories of them. They were astonished and delighted with the two men who refused to be away from one another. "You'll never guess what they did!" I'm pretty sure those nurses seriously underestimated growing up with those two as my uncles. Uncle Dean's memory was fading fast, demanding that salt be at the edges of every room and warning everyone he saw of the impending Apocalypse. The day that he tried to paint an angel sigil on the wall with his blood is the day the facility upgraded them to round-the-clock care. As his mind continued to fail, Uncle Dean's body started to follow. But through it all, Uncle Dean never forgot who Uncle Cas was.

"My angel. Mine." It was the constant refrain.

It was a Thursday like any other when I got the call, the call I had been expecting for nearly two years. When I arrived at the hospital, the rest of the family was already gathered. Then I got the news I hadn't been expecting; Uncle Cas was gone too. I couldn't understand this, Uncle Cas was extremely healthy for a man of his age.

"It was the strangest thing," the doctor told us. "When we checked up on them this morning, they were lying tangled up together and they were both gone. Dean I understand, that last stroke left him so weak. But Cas? He was healthy as a horse. It's the strangest thing, it's like his heart just stopped. And he passed his last check-up with flying colors."

My father got a faraway look in his eye. "Cas always promised Dean he wouldn't leave him again. Maybe he gathered the last bit of his angel mojo and this is him keeping that promise."

Perhaps their later lives weren't as extraordinary as their earlier escapades, perhaps they were no different than any other couple who has ever lived and loved on this planet. They met in a dark and terrible place, they fought and argued through the beginning stages of their relationship, they fell (quite literally) for one another, and then they lived a relatively quiet life together for 30-odd years. But sometimes it is the ordinary that makes us extraordinary and sometimes in the midst of the extraordinary, we are able to find the ordinary that helps us to continue keeping on. And sometimes true love is the most extraordinary thing the world has ever seen. 


End file.
